Games for Scripture Engagement

Hi Peter, Great questions. I am thinking about engaging volunteer for Bible Ministry and building a community of practice and service with gamification. I have seen a number of literacy projects (including shell books, or other scriptural literacy) giving price or having different kind of contest and competition. I think gamification already be used by some of our colleagues without aware of term. And yet I think there can be more potential to develop. I think gamification is good for different kind of engagement and community learning. I am using github for open source resources development, since most of the contributors will be volunteers, the rewards for volunteers contribution is the feeedback from the users or other developers, e.g. putting like and keep track of how often they commit for their projects, people may 'add', 'like'. Life in some sense is a game, sometimes we just don't realize that, one Chinese Nobel winners commented his job in the laboratory as game to contribute to research and man kind. People paid him to play game. I have been loving my job as God given games. The only problem that I was not able to play all my games with my family and they thought that I am workaholic. :) I am thinking I am having fun. One of my concern is that game, business skills and technology are all gifts from God through human innovation. However, business and secular world seem make good use of them better than church, mission and parachurches. We have to be careful about our dichotomy of everything. One of my concern is that many of the translated scriptures may not be well use. I just wonder whether we can develop an app allow the mother tongue user to edit and comment on the translation and keep track the use and feedback of the users with motivation. I think there can also be contest and competition between different translation projects or within a cluster languages in order to allow more interaction. Localization of game beyond translating the text? Certainly, game is like other human behavior, where I will call behavior of having fun. Human behaviour cannot be translated through text, but through foreign examples and demonstration bring into the context. I didn't believe the translated scripture can replace missionaries. However, I think the modern missionary should equip well not mere the scripture, but innovation, technology, entrepreneurship, glocal mentality plus more fun and some humor, one of the great things that I learned from my American missionary teachers, especially, Norman Barnard. He told me sermon should be entertaining. Yes, I think a sermon should be entertaining for God, people listening to ourselves and hopefully the preacher themselves. I think that can be applied to ministry of Bible Translation, other ministry and other job called by God. Thank you for being up this topic of theology of game and fun. I am sorry that I was not able to interact much with you during my course of gamification.

Hi Peter, I am happy to share my reaction to your post. It may seem a little like a 'wet rag'. I don't mind being corrected or better informed by others in due course. One thing that has been in mind of late is that in Western Kenya the church is exactly not a 'game'. It is serious. That is not to say that people do not or should not laugh. Game to me then ties in with Western dualism, in which the basis is some kind of understanding, and other things are secondary to that comprehension task. So then games can be used to supplement one's understanding. African Christianity however, I am suggesting, is a serious engagement with the powers. Any suggestion that it ought to include 'games' could in that sense be offensive. I could add here a question like 'should church be fun'? In the UK, I think the resounding answer will be 'yes', and people set out to make church fun. The term 'fun' itself may be hard to translate into African tongues? But, I don't think people are looking for fun, but for God. That is not to say the church isn't 'fun', in another sense, but is it fun exactly because of the serious nature of the exploit. Not sure if I'm entirely coherent, but there's my reaction, and as I said I don't mind being shot down ... or being told that I haven't understood what you mean by 'games'.

Gamification sounds a little like an education method called anchored learning. You could certainly apply the anchored learning technique to gamification, anyway. Anchored learning was developed by John Bransford in the late 1980s. “[The model] is designed to help students develop useful knowledge rather than inert knowledge. At the heart of the model is an emphasis on the importance of creating an anchor or focus that generates interest and enables students to identify and define problems and to pay attention to their own perception and comprehension of these problems.” Students are provided with scenarios, realistic case studies, and/or specific problems to solve. Through information exploration, group discussion, and collaborative projects, students address meaningful questions. Anchored instruction requires putting the students in the context of a problem-based story. The students "play" an authentic role while investigating the problem, identifying gaps to their knowledge, researching the information needed to solve the problem, and developing solutions. Principles of Anchored instruction (adapted from Bransford et al., 1990) include: realistic task or event, problem is anchored or focused; students take ownership (based on relevancy of scenario and relatedness to problems and goals seen everyday); deep development of knowledge structures, highly transferable to other situations; complex content, solved through interconnectedness of sub-problems, multiple scenarios presented, problem presented in a narrative format, a story with embedded data; learning context is generative, students identify with problem and become actively involved in generating solution. I think the method could be transferred to gamification…it could be a successful way to engage people in the Scriptures in a meaningful way.

Peter, Thanks for your response, following your research on 'games' and so on in Kenya. I guess I can say 'thanks for listening'! I will continue to engage this issue in my own thinking. Your challenge appreciated! There seems to be an issue about dualism. In a dualistic view, 'learning' can be separated from 'worship' ... but for a holistic worldview not so ... something like that.

I can see the relevance of game thoery with SKOPOS or purpose driven translation approach/theory, consisting of elements about mediation between text, author, readers, translators, with the dynamic of translation team as well. Hopefully, Bible translation is not zero-sum games but multiple winning games. :)

hey, I am studying the course. I just wonder how can we reach the critical mass for working collaboration and gamification for scriptural translation and engagement.

One of my concern is about business gamification and christian community gamification and fun for sinful nature. I think gamification for business for marketing may use a some ideology, hedonism with sex, drug, violence, indulgence, wealthy .... etc, which may not be acceptable by Christian church. At the same time the church need to reevaluate their view to some of God given 'secular' enjoyment and the justification of the use without abuse God's gifts.